Book Project

One of the owners, Karen, arrived with her friend Rikki, around 2:30 PM. (They are staying in the casita on the roof.) I wanted to make a good impression. After all, I am living in their house. So I had Elena prepare a meal for their arrival; a salad, Spanish rice and enchiladas verde. They were duly impressed and when given the options for beverages they chose the white wine. The conversation ranged from house logistics to careers to life in Mexico in general. Karen’s husband is a lawyer and I elected to tell the story of my father’s illustrious career and reputation as the “Pot Judge”, which sent the 50-something year old Karen off on a tangent.

“We’re not religious people, you know. We’re bad people - but fun people. One year, on my husband’s birthday my college-age sons were asking me what they could get for their father. He is really difficult to buy for. We grew up in the sixties you know, and I told them that I probably wasn’t going to win the mother-of-the-year award for this but what they could get him that he would enjoy, was some dope. I mean, he doesn’t know where to get it and I don’t want to put anyone in any danger, but if it’s is convenient . . . They did and Greg was really happy.”

Later she asked if she could go into the owner’s closet and get some things that they’d left during their last stay in San Miguel, and I said, “sure.” I watched her ascend the stairs with a significant liquor supply. And I was worried that they wouldn’t find me to be a satisfactory tenant. Hell, party in the casita!

At around 5:00 the thunder rumbled and the skies opened up. The street outside turned into a river. I heard the words, “Holly shit!” repeated again and again in English so I looked outside my living room window where a group of American teenagers were standing at the front door of a house, watching the newly formed river rush bye. I called to them out my window, “It happens every couple of weeks this time of year.” “Well it could have waited a few days until we were gone. Our rooms are flooding. It’s coming up through the drains!” “Good luck,” I said, and closed the drapes.


Alex, Andrea and I are working on a book to promote La Cañada de la Virgen, Alex’s mother’s ranch and the community surrounding. Alex is in charge of the photography, I’m responsible for the text and Andrea is handling the layout and translation. Alex felt we could better focus on the project if we worked on it at the ranch. So off we went.

Several bedrooms have been restored, adjacent to the old hacienda ruin, to accommodate Alex’s family and any guests should they desire to stay at the ranch. The rooms are furnished very traditionally and the beds have luxurious down comforters. In addition to caring for her six children (with another on the way) Mary Elena prepares our meals. She is the wife of the caretaker who is gone tending to the cattle most of the day but has still managed to father seven children before his 35th birthday.

The children where shy and reserved when we first arrived but after dinner they were quick to warm up as we climbed a mulberry tree and picked its meager fruit. Mary Elena came out wrapped in a shawl, carrying her youngest, and watched as we played soccer, jumped rope and made figures out of mud. There is no electricity at the ranch. The children have never seen a movie (the oldest is 11). Neither has Mary Elena.

I was impressed at how well the children played with each other. No squabbling, no toys to fight over. An old rope and some imagination and they laughed until the sun set and we all went to bed.

Unfortunately, both Andrea and I woke up with raging cases of diarrhea. I told her that the children were waiting to jump rope with her. “No, don’t shake the piñata,” was her reply.

After breakfast we headed off to Casa Esquela, another building on the ranch where we could work undisturbed. The children appeared very disappointed that we were leaving and weren’t going to play with them. Casa Esquela is accessed by carefully walking over stones to cross the river. Casa Esquela’s bathrooms have not been installed. So if we needed a bathroom we had to go back to the main house on the other side of the river. Picking your way across a river when you’ve got diarrhea is no picnic.

We escaped any playground responsibilities that evening as a storm moved in and it poured all through the night. The morning was bright and clear and out my window I could see cowboys lassoing horses in the coral. The ride back to town was an adventure. The rain had turned part of the road to mud and the remainder was rutted and rocky. There was much “Shaking of the piñata” and Andrea and I were silent in our concentration.